While other MediaPost newsletters and articles remain free to all ... our new Research Intelligencer service is reserved for paid subscribers ...

Subscribe today to gain access to the every Research Intelligencer article we publish as well as the exclusive daily newsletter, full access to The MediaPost Cases, first-look research and daily insights from Joe Mandese, Editor in Chief.

Commentary

Paramount Joins The Game

Paramount recently became the second studio (after Warner Bros.) to pursue video game publisher ambitions. Yesterday in Variety, Sandi Isaacs, Paramount's senior vice president of
interactive and mobile, and Matt Candler, Paramount's new vice president of interactive development, discussed
the company's move into the interactive entertainment business: "We are entering into deals now where we will be publishing games this year," Isaacs said. "There's going to
be a slate where in some cases we're publishing, in some cases we're co-publishing, or in others we're funding development and another publisher buys it. It's important for us to have
a flexible model."

Initially, Paramount will be focusing on casual and mobile games, which will be titles with lower development costs and shorter development cycles. The studio will be
well-positioned to take advantage of its stock of intellectual property and access to star talent, making the venture not entirely unlike Electronic Art's recently announced "Blueprint" group, which combines EA's IP library with Hollywood agency CAA's access to star power to develop new casual
titles.

advertisement

advertisement

We can expect to see more movie studios moving into game publishing as video games continue to increase their influence on popular culture, and their share of leisure time. It's
entirely possible that Paramount was spurred on in this endeavor by recent analyst predictions that their upcoming superhero flick, "Iron Man," may have its May 2 opening weekend torpedoed
by the release of Grand Theft Auto 4, which drops only three days earlier on April 29.

It's not an unprecedented prediction. Back in October, studio execs blamed poor ticket sales for
the last quarter of 2007 on the release of "Halo 3," which had nearly half of Xbox 360 owners glued to their TVs.